My work is all about improving health and health care through knowledge. It spans medical publishing to community health, taking in technology and innovation, and is influenced by growing up in a working-class community. I share insights from all of the above through public speaking.

Hello…

I’m Dr Pritpal S Tamber and my work is all about improving health and health care through the generation, validation, communication and application of evidence. It spans medical publishing to community health, taking in technology and innovation.

Me. On a good day.

In community health, my work is on how health care in high-income countries fails its low-income communities, and is influenced by growing up in a working-class community. I have learnt that at the heart of this failure is that health care has become a supply-defined industry organised solely around a bio-medical understanding of health. It no longer seeks to understand the lives of the people it purports to serve.

In response, I founded the Creating Health Collaborative, an international group of practitioners working on the basis of how people make sense of their lives, including their health. Through their work, I have gleaned 12 recurring principles to working with communities in difficult social circumstances. They describe an inclusive and participatory process.

The principles inform projects in the US and the UK. In the US, Bridging Health & Community has held a national symposium (May 2017, Oakland, CA) and partnered with The California Endowment to examine how public health might embrace community voice as a core health strategy. Bridging Health & Community is now building a ‘learning cohort’ of health care providers willing to apply the Principles to their community health work. In the UK, Beyond Systems sought to nurture a field of practice based on parity between systems and citizens and is currently on ice.

In medical publishing, technology and innovation my work includes how producers and distributors of data and information can evolve in the face of technological developments (including electronic medical records) and changing end-user requirements. See my clients.

While at medical school I took a sabbatical to work at the BMJ. That gave me an insight into the importance of knowledge to health and health care. Since leaving clinical practice I have worked as an editor and publisher of medical journals, the leader of a company that sought to find the small number of articles that truly matter from the thousands published each week, the Medical Director of a clinical improvement company, and the Physician Editor of TEDMED. See LinkedIn for more.

The evidence is clear that the greatest threat to health is climate change. That’s why I lead a carbon neutral life by off-setting my carbon consumption through monthly donations to Tree Aid (while also looking for ways to reduce my consumption). Tree Aid doesn't just protect the environment by planting trees but also considers how their work can help people lift themselves out of poverty.